

UNATTRACTIVE HUMANITY. 191 



forth apparently as fresh and anxious for the encounter 

 as any animal could have done ; so in my belief an 

 unwounded hog would in the same manner have 

 received the first assegai, and on the skill with which 

 it was thrust depended the whole result. 



Being too exhausted for further exercise, we all 

 started off for some adjoining pits, where the horses 

 had been ordered to meet us. Here we met the 

 whole crew of our beaters assembled, and with them 

 many women and children, whose delight at inspecting 

 the veteran boar, and handling his formidable tusks, 

 is easier to imagine than describe. These little imps 

 are wonderfully precocious, but attractively so, and 

 quite as clever as their parents in expressing them- 

 selves by signs, and, but that they are as a rule 

 so fearfully ugly and cursed with such protruding- 

 abdomens, they would make rather interesting pets. 

 Frank Buckland (not the auctioneer) would, I believe, 

 almost have given his life for one, for his greatest 

 hankering was ever after monstrosities. 



